Russian-born American pianist Julia Zilberquit has earned critical acclaim as a recitalist, orchestral soloist, chamber musician and recording artist. The Los Angeles Times called her “a forceful and rhapsodic soloist,” and the Seattle Times has praised her as “a dynamic young pianist with a big technique and an innate sense of musical drama.” Ms. Zilberquit made her orchestral debut at Carnegie Hall, performing Shostakovich’s Concertino (in her own arrangement for piano and chamber orchestra) as part of a tour with the Moscow Virtuosi under Vladimir Spivakov throughout North America and Israel. She made her Tchaikovsky Hall debut in Moscow with Constantine Orbelian and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra in the world premiere of Sergei Slonimsky's Piano Concerto, a work dedicated to her. Ms. Zilberquit is the 1994 First Prize winner of the Vienna International Music Competition.


In, 2004, Ms. Zilberquit found and premiered a virtually unknown early piano concerto by Beethoven in Moscow with Yuri Bashmet and the “Young Russia” orchestra, and performed it again in Montreal with Yuli Turovsky and “I Musici de Montréal” in 2006.  She has performed with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, New European Strings, Deutsche Symphony, Moscow Soloists, Cairo Symphony, Moscow Virtuosi, Russian State Orchestra, Bolshoi Orchestra, Musica Viva, St. Petersburg Camerata, St. Petersburg’s Capella, the Russian Philharmonia, Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonietta Cracovia, Sinfonia Varsovia.


Ms. Zilberquit has given recitals at the world's major halls including New York's Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.  Her engagements at major international music festivals include appearances in Seattle, Colmar (France), Klangbogen (Vienna), Valery Gergiev's “White Nights” (St. Petersburg), Richter's “December Nights” (Moscow), “The Palaces of St. Petersburg,” and the Penderecki Festival (Poland). She has also performed under the baton of Sir Yehudi Menuhin at the Beethoven Festival in Vienna.


Ms. Zilberquit’s first solo recording, The Mystery of Bagatelles, was released on Naxos in 2007 and was praised as a “superb performance” by The Washington Post, and described as an “adventurous program, sparkl[ing] with unusual clarity and pointalistic luminescence” in London’s Piano Magazine.  Ms. Zilberquit has also recorded Jewish Music from Russia, featuring works by Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Slonimsky (Harmonia Mundi), and Shostakovich's Concertino with the Moscow Virtuosi and Vladimir Spivakov (BMG). She has been a featured artist on WQXR (New York), RadioFrance and DeutschlandRadio.


In 2008, Ms. Zilberquit premiered Slonimsky’s Jewish Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra, which was commissioned by and dedicated to her, with Leon Botstein and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, in commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the State of Israel in Jerusalem.  Ms. Zilberquit performed recently at the opening concert of the 2008 Bard Music Festival, “Prokofiev and His World,” as well as at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

                                                                                             
A native of Moscow, Julia Zilberquit was born into a family of musicians. She graduated from Moscow Gnessin School of Music and later received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School (class of Bella Davidovich). She lives in New York City with her husband, son, and daughter. For more information, please visit www.juliazilberquit.com.